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TechnoratiWhy the Polls on Climate Change Are Wrong
This Saturday, October 24, is 350.org's International Day of Climate Action. Citizens all over the world will participate in rallies and creative actions to let governments and delegates to the Copenhagen climate change conference know they want real solutions on climate change now, and not incremental steps or half measures that punt to some future day of reckoning.
Here's a little creative action you can do to mark the occasion right now from your computer. Go ahead and News-Google the words: New Survey Climate Change. Watch what happens. At present writing, the top two search results that come up are utterly, irreconcilably contradictory. The first is a writeup of a groundbreaking project that I advised, World Wide Views on Global Warming, which surveyed citizens in the US and 37 other countries; we found that everywhere, including in the U.S., citizens want much more aggressive action on climate change than either the U.S. Congress or the negotiators preparing for the Copenhagen seem prepared to consider. The second is an article about a new Pew poll that shows the number of Americans who see global warming as a threat has fallen 20% in the last two years.
Who's right? It seems that our representatives in Washington and delegates to the UN COP15 climate summit in Copenhagen are eager to believe the second poll. Congressional debate on climate change legislation and preparations for COP15 are both following a similar pattern of lowering ambitions and expectations, focusing on limited areas of current agreement and incremental steps, and deferring more contentious issues of targets, timetables, funding and enforcement until some later date. We are increasingly hearing from climate policymakers that it will take more time to do things right, that we have to meet people where they are instead of imposing radical reforms from above.
But there is reason to believe that they're dead wrong, and that citizens are way ahead of the policy makers, despite what some polls say. Climate change polls typically spend a few minutes on the phone asking a random sample of people a couple of superficial, often leading questions, frequently interrupting dinnertime. The process elicits off-the-cuff reactions to complex issues that are profoundly consequential to life on our planet. It's a dubious way to gather opinion on a sober subject like climate change, and many understandably shrug it off with some cynicism.
World Wide Views on the other hand is a citizen deliberative process distinct from polling, and expanded for the first time to the global level. Unlike polls or this summer's over-heated Congressional "town halls" on health care, World Wide Views participants received balanced expert information in advance, based on the Fourth Assessment Report of the Nobel Prize-winning UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Then they spent an entire day learning together, in neutrally facilitated deliberations, prior to voting on policy recommendations.
Participants were everyday people selected to reflect general demographic tendencies in their nation or region in terms of age, gender, education, occupation, urban versus countryside, and ethnicity or race. Climate experts and staff from organized stakeholder groups involved with global warming were excluded. "I'm from West Virginia; coal miners don't talk a lot about climate change," explained Larry Ragland, a participant from Methuen, Massachusetts. "I'm not an environmentalist, and two weeks ago I had a completely different impression of what climate change meant."
Thousands of people like Larry gathered on September 26th in Atlanta, Boston, Denver, Los Angeles, and Phoenix, and throughout Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe and Latin America. During the course of the day, they voted overwhelmingly that their leaders should do far more and go far faster, not scale back and slow down as they're apparently doing now.
Here are some of the key U.S. results from World Wide Views:
- 90% of U.S. participants say it is urgent to reach a tough, new agreement at the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December and not punt to subsequent meetings.
- 87% said that by 2020 greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. and other developed nations should be cut 25-40% or even more below 1990 levels (the Kerry-Boxer Senate bill would cut US emissions only 20% below 2005 levels).
- 71% want nations that fail to meet their obligations under a new agreement to be subject to severe or significant economic sanctions.
- 69% believe the price of fossil fuels should be increased.
- 88% want strict targets for keeping global warming within 2 degrees Celsius of pre-industrial levels (half of participants, especially in countries hardest hit by climate change, want measures to hold temperatures at the current level or even bring them down to pre-industrial levels).
- There is strong consensus for more fair and proportionate burden sharing, with 76% favoring 2020 emissions reduction targets for fast-growing economies like India, China and Brazil.
- 83% support significant or severe economic sanctions against countries that do not live up to their emissions reduction commitments (the citizen group in Bangladesh proposed creating an international court to try climate cases and "provide opportunity for negatively affected countries to claim compensation").
- 87% want strong new international financial mechanisms to support these goals.
These are ambitions that you'll either find very much dumbed down or absent entirely in current negotiations on Kerry-Boxer and COP15. You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to sense something is wrong with this picture.
Considering the deep concern and striking calls to action evident in World Wide Views' global and U.S. deliberative results, what should we make of conventional polls that say Americans and some others aren't really all that worked up about climate change and don't support robust measures to combat it? Are those polls measuring informed public opinion, or does their approach give political cover to climate incrementalists and climate change deniers? You decide.
So when citizens around the world take to streets on October 24 to demand faster, more aggressive action on climate change from Washington and Copenhagen, don't fall into the trap of dismissing them as somehow on the fringe. The best and most thoughtful vehicle we have for registering considered public opinion indicates that in reality those activists represent the mainstream. If members of Congress and delegates to Copenhagen want to be responsive to public opinion, as they claim they do, then World Wide Views provides the survey results they need to take to heart.
30 Comments so far
Show AllOne other consideration for plumbing this disparity of polling results:
Consider the organization doing the polling and where their money comes from.
Pew, despite some of its excellent achievements on behalf of the environment--(after all, how does one derive environmental credentials without accomplishments to point to?) -- is just another neoliberal corporate foundation, who, by the way, is well known in the grant seeking community of environmental activists as a ruthless purveyor of restricted grant funds with significant strings attached.
Pew coffers are derived from one of the more egregious planet polluters, Sunoco Corporation, the 55th-largest corporate producer of air pollution in the United States, with a significant financial interest in maintaining the cataclysmic path of status quo. As a fall back position they'll be glad to accept the billions of dollars they'll derive from cap and trade mandates in all the pitifully ineffectual "climate" legislation thus far produced by our corrupt legislative process.
There are significant questions about the recent Pew poll
In the CBS article, a long-term poller on the issue is consulted:
"Earlier polls, from different organizations, have not detected a growing skepticism about the science behind global warming.
Since 1997, the percentage of Americans that believe the Earth is heating up has remained constant - at around 80 percent - in polling done by Jon Krosnick of Stanford University. Krosnick, who has been conducting surveys on attitudes about global warming since 1993 was surprised by the Pew results.
He described the decline in the Pew results as "implausible," saying there is nothing that could have caused it. "
You can see more about his work on this at:
woods.stanford.edu/research/surveys.html
communication.stanford.edu/faculty/krosnick
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Krosnick
Brian
I think any drop can be accounted for by individual perception. The last two winters have been closer to what most middle-aged people in northern states grew up thinking was 'normal', but what to younger people might seem to be an impending ice-age. For people not trained in the sciences, I suspect it's hard to comprehend that local variations can appear to represent a return to 'normal' even while Earth as a whole continues to build up destabilising energy.
t_g
As for the average US citizen and their understanding of the world: as the US media is pure propaganda (FOX!) and silly nonsense (wall to wall covering of US celebrity gossip, reality this'n'that and traffic or other accidents), what would the average US American know about the world? As they only travel if the military asks them to bomb some country they never really knew existed, or if they participate in some reality show - why would they know or even care for anything happening to "the rest of the world"?
Yes, I have been many times to the US, my son graduated from Brown University and lived there for a while - until he got a gutful from your "patriotism", which is really just ignorance about anything and everything beside the US.
Has anybody noticed the pink elephant in the room? I was asked if I travel overseas: no matter how much I do, it is nothing compared to the footprint of your jetfighters and your drones that besides the killing and destruction they bring upon any given country, not only muck up the athmosphere with their fuel usage, they rain depleted uranium and the like...
It is you, US Americans, who destroy the planet for the rest of us and wouldn't give a toss about it...
Shame on you!
Toad Goddess?
Your juvenile rant is twisted with rage, ignorance and hate. Shall we discuss the social history of the British Empire luv?
Toad-goddess seemed to present an accurate assessment of the situation to me.
My only criticism is that her cosmopolitan bourgeois lifestyle has a larger carbon footprint than she probably wants to admit.
Does it matter what people in the U.S.A. or in other countries believe about global warming? Civilization, as most of us know it, is completely dependent on the burning of fossil fuels. Drastic reduction of the burning of fossil fuels is the only practical way of stopping global warming. That reduction would mean that the present population of the world could no longer be maintained. And it is not people in primitive cultures who would have to be reduced. It is you and I. If we need to slash emissions of CO2 by 80% then the populations of the developed countries may have to be reduced by 80%. Of course a drastic reduction in 'standards of living' could offset some of the needed population reduction. Reductions in the 'standard of living' is also reduction in GDP. Reduction in GDP is called a recession unless it is prolonged and drastic and then it is called a depression. So...stopping global warming means that we need to deliberately create a severe and permanent worldwide depression. And we will not replace the burning of 84 million barrels of oil each day and millions of tons of coal with solar and wind. If you believe that wind and solar will replace oil and coal then you are living in a delusion.
Deep reductions of fossil fuel use do not have to entail a reduction in "standard of living", only that we redefine this "standard of living". Like I wrote earlier, simply moving my home and job from a suburban to an urban area reduced my personal fossil fuel usage by about 80%, and my "standard of living" in the form of access to good (mostly regionally produced) food and dining, art and cultural activities - all easily accessible without a car - increased dramatically. Heck, just having the scraping, snow sweeping and windshield defrosting on winter mornings replaced with a short walk to the bus stop was a big increase in my living standard. And not giving a flying you-know-what what happens to the price of gasoline? Precious!
Let me see if I've got this straight:
1. Groups of "average" people with average-level educations and no particular expertise are brought to a large room and given information and presentations based on a single report from the IPCC, and this is called "balanced" education.
2. These groups then discuss and deliberate on the issue of climate change.
3. They then vote on policy recommendations that will be forwarded to the COP15 conference.
4. The results on every major question yielded results virtually identical across every geographic and economic area, within a few percentage points.
5. And we are asked to believe that this is a balanced, objective, survey of educated opinion?
I've seen less indoctrination in a military boot camp. Polls are just polls, and generally tell us what the pollster (or commissioner) wants us to know. This isn't as much a poll as outright propaganda.
We should be grateful to those who,with their divine guidance, have been able to debunnk the international scientific communitie's findings concerning global warming--despite their dedication and years of research. Without heros such as Geoge Bush, Tom Delay, Senator James Inhofe, FOX News, & Rush Limbaugh, where would we now be?
This is why I rarely answer public polls; the questions are often present false dichotomies. Kudos to this alternative survey for actually trying to find the informed opinion of us all.
Who sponsored the poll? After eight years of oil companies controlling US scientific reports on global warming it's no surprise some fools bought it. Having said that, I still don't think it's an accurate representation of Americans.
What kills me though is the cherrypicking by Congress and Obama. Suddenly, they point to a poll and base their level of action according to the American people? Ha!
OK then, why aren't they pointing to polls on single payer health care or getting out of Afghanistan and act accordingly? They're a bunch of perverse liars who do what suits them and only them. They all act in their own self interest to stay in power. And that means doing what their corporate paymasters tell them to do, period.
When Carter was President, the US Navy presented a paper to Congress stating that in roughly 30 years the Arctic Ocean would be open water and that Congress needed to start planing for a fleet to patrol the seaways. They were promptly laughed all the way back to the Pentagon. Only the level of alarm is new!
The two polls are not at all contradictory.
The Pew poll proves that ordinary Americans, if merely asked out of the blue, are considerably less concerned about global warming than they used to be.
World Wide Views on Global Warming proves that ordinary people, even Americans, WHEN PROVIDED WITH SOBER FACTS THAT THE MSM WILL NEVER PROVIDE THEM, and AFTER SPENDING A WHOLE DAY THINKING AND NOT WATCHING TV, become alarmed about global warming and propose sensible policies.
That's a big difference. "our representatives in Washington and delegates to the UN COP15 climate summit in Copenhagen are eager to believe the [Pew] poll" because they know that the vast majority of people will NOT take a day off for a scientific seminar on global warming. If for no better reason than that they justly fear losing their jobs if they take a day off.
Great post, Angry Kraut. It (or some variation) should be posted on a good number of CD discussions.
It's looking like polling orgs like Pew are agents of the elite in the same way as the media. The choice to poll people briefly during TV commercials and portray it as gospel supports the economic growth paradigm where USans race to produce/consume more, with minimum time for civic participation. If I were an elite hell-bent on building empire via mass slavery I'd invite the Pews to cocktail parties and pat them on the back.
There almost never seems to be a concise article and/or comments on what is the general topic of climate change or better yet and more specific, ice ages with the glacial and interglacial periods which comprize an ice age.
One of the most important aspects of this dwindling end of the interglacial period of the current ice age is basically the 'human footprint' on the environment, not just the carbon footprint which is totally related to the current bout of extra fine weather humans have enjoyed for the past 10,000 years or so and that human footprint versus the carbon footprint is bound up in what the humans are doing to the environment and just driving a car to work and back or store and back, etc., it has much much more to do with the attack on the environment by humans for their needs be it for survival or for just greed but there can be no doubt that what 7,000,000,000 people's affect on the environment / ecological system is cause for concern IF we intend on maintaining an 'unfettered' growth of the human population.
And as '''toad_goddess October 24th, 2009 9:29 am"" described their dream home with its effective use of wood and structuring to maintain a natural comfort zone without the use of extra appliances is seemingly wonderful, but what would it all be like if all 7,000,000,000 people were to have the same type of home; certainly if all the forests did not disappear then whatever service(s) that forests provide would be greatly compromized and that would certainly have disastrous effects on the up and coming next glacial period of the next ice age.
The next renewal of an ice age may not really begin for another 1000years or so but it is certainly coming and that will not be such a pretty sight.
When I saw the Pew poll in the NYT today, I became instantly suspicious. The American people, once they have been educated as to the dangers of ignoring climate change, would NOT change their minds! Something is going on here, and we need to get to the bottom of it fast. I think that we are being lied to by the obscenely rich corporate elites, and they are somehow, through technology or bribery, skewing the polls. I think that the only thing that will save this country is a revolution, a non-violent, civily disobedient one. It could work, but we need strong leaders. Is there anybody out there who fits that description?
A poll is just measuring what someone tells a pollster - not necessarily what they believe. Also, you seem to be making the error that most USAns think scientifically and make systematic analytical conclusions about things, then stick to their conclusion until contradicting evidence arises.
I only wish this were true. Most USAns believe this or that because it is fashionable to believe this or that. ("fashion" being dictated by commercial interests working through the media) And, my observations are that in the US, concern about global warming is definitely going "out of style".
ubrew12 writes:
"...but even I haven't incorporated permafrost methane releases into my thinking. The number of 'oh sh*t' moments among THOSE researchers is increasing also. This is all going to get VERY REAL, VERY SHORTLY. Like in 5 years I think what I'm saying now will be the common opinion."
I'm with you on that one. See my post to the main headline article at CD today.
Also, it is always interesting to study property insurance actuarials. I cannot get property insurance because several years ago a big tree fell on my property during a 60 mph windstorm and did a lot of damage and I had the nerve to file a claim! Funny how ALL the insurers knew about that claim. If you think health insurance is a racket... Both are state-regulated by revolving door types.
By the way, I'm in the midwest, not a coastal state. Here the climate-change threat is turbulence; the incidence of high winds and tornados is increasing, probably doubling each decade. The irony is that the trees (esp. in places like the Hooiser National Forest) reduce the severity of such winds, but then homeowners (and municipalities) seeking to protect their property from wind damage, cut them down. In my small town, a few years ago the town council decided to eliminate four blocks of old maple trees when doing a new street project. Just cut 'em down.
Hunker down and bunker up, the times they are a'changin. It's already been happening for some time. Not in five years. I've experienced more "natural disasters" in the past decade than in the previous 50 years combined. I think increasing insurance rates and refusal to insure are reflections of actual/actuarial fact.
-30-
Five years ago, if you'd said the Arctic was going to be ice-free in 10 years, you would have been laughed out of town. Today its accepted science.
Regarding studies on Polar Warming in the last 10 years, the phrase used by scientists that you'll hear used again and again is 'its worse than we thought'.
Two years ago, the IPCC estimated sea levels would increase 1.5 ft by end of century. A year later, they doubled that estimate. Now, the most credible estimate is 3 to 6 ft.
Three years ago, scientists published data from gravimetric data on satellites orbiting the Poles. The general conclusion on the amount of measured ice mass loss in the previous 5 years was 'oh sh*t'.
So, here's my prediction: 8 ft of sea level rise by end of century, and 3 ft just in the next 20 years. This means that half of Florida is going underwater, all of Waikiki, and significant fractions of the eastern seaboard, just in the next 20 years. The demonstrations today will do nothing to prevent this. Due to the multi-decadal lag between action and reaction in polar ice-shelves perched over oceans, this amount of rise will merely reflect LAST centuries warming.
A CD article yesterday mentioned that Allstate Insurance won't insure low-lying properties on the Eastern Seaboard. Their excuse is because of the Hurricane risk. But since the primary risk to property of a hurricane is the storm surge, its obvious that they understand the existing threat to low lying properties due to sea level rise. If you own such properties, within 3 ft of mean sea level, you should probably try to sell your property before this concern becomes common knowledge, possibly in an little as 5 years, and your ability to find buyers shrinks to the hard-core denialist community.
The irony of todays demonstrations is that they are actually seeking to prevent 3 ft of sea level rise from becoming 6 ft. A bunch of neo-hippies trying to pull a bunch of capitalist property owners as*es out of a sling. LOL.
I don't have much hope that they will succeed. I may be pessimistic (but I think realist), but even I haven't incorporated permafrost methane releases into my thinking. The number of 'oh sh*t' moments among THOSE researchers is increasing also. This is all going to get VERY REAL, VERY SHORTLY. Like in 5 years I think what I'm saying now will be the common opinion.
[So, here's my prediction: 8 ft of sea level rise by end of century, and 3 ft just in the next 20 years]
A reasonable guess, I hope you're very wrong but am sure you're not. A 3 ft. rise of the sea level will not just affect the property owners on the coasts. Such a rise of the ocean, and the resulting displacement of the tidal boundaries of said oceans, would mean that every port on earth would need to be rebuilt. Most of our goods (including food) are still shipped by the sea, if the ports are closed due to the effects of climate change then most of the human race will starve before those ports can be rebuilt. Yes, some things can be offloaded directly from the ship to barges, but that's not an option for goods that need to be moved from the railyards to the ships (and vice-versa) in a timely manner. Without decent ports to move iron, coal, grain and manufactured goods the economy will also be shut down.
I suppose it depends on the timeline of how the ice melts, if it's a gradual melt, then we might be able to adapt to the event. If, as is more likely, the glaciers on land in the north melt in a season (or even two) then the results would be quite catastrophic. Worse, they'll be a predictable catastrophe, kinda like living at the base of a mountain that has had a history of avalanches, and then deciding to build a home with a flat roof rather than an angled one. Or like living at the base of a volcano and not thinking of any possible escape route.
Where's your evidence to the contrary?
Yup, and their God - the earths atmosphere and oceans - is really pissed off at science-denying kooks like you!
t_g
We have a house on the waterfront in Australia: Far North Queensland, by the Coral Sea. It is built as a "Queenslander", which means that it stands on poles, has large verandas all around and is made of timber. This is what we wanted when we built it just over 8 years ago, when we moved here.
The "Queenslander" is the traditional style, it has very good ventilation, no need for air-conditioning, it is built of timber, which is also climate-friendly and the fact that the house is on poles helps to protect against the floods in the rainy season. The new homes are usually built in this area out of brick, come with standard air-conditioning, small windows, instead of large french doors and yes, there is a patio, but no verandas around the house. We also have skylights, louvres on the french doors and windows and instead of brick just timber all around us.
We also have solar panels on the roof and a rainwater tank in the garden.
We cultivate a little vegie garden at the back of the garden, we have instead of climbing roses or wisteria passionfruit, instead of magnolia we have lime, orange and paw paw trees.
We are retired urbanites, but made these changes willingly, moved to the country, built this particular house, planted these type of plants - and love our lifestyle!
We urge everyone in every climate to make changes to their lives. Yes, it'll benefit the future generations, but really, we also benefit.
I have always had some difficulty seeing how moving out to the country can be a contribution to addressing climate change. It seems to me that moving out to a rural area (unless one lives like a hermit) entails much increased car use compared to low-or-no car city living. How much driving do you do, (km per year) and what kind of vehicle is used? What were the energy inputs in building the house versus finding an existing house? Assuming that you are a USAn, how often do you fly home?
I saw my own carbon footprint shrink enormously by moving to small townhouse in an old city neighborhood.
Have you considered the devastating heating effect of the urban structure? High-density cityscape converts sunlight into twice as much heat as suburban settings, about 4 times more than rural plains, and about 6 times than heavily wooded areas. The same sunlight falls, but plants and water and soil store the energy or convert it in natural processes like photosynthesis. Concrete and steel and glass just get hot. Most cities "enjoy" about 5 degrees warmer temperatures because of this year-round phenomenon.
Also, the destruction of wildlife habitat, water and air pollution, rainwater and stream diversion, and loss of plant and animal populations just begin the ecological destruction caused by cities. If the EPA required an environmental impact study on any city over a couple of thousand people, not one could ever be built.
Your personal carbon footprint wasn't reduced. It was only externalized in the same way that corporations externalize expenses by letting someone else clean up their environmental mess.
Sorry, but you are arguments are ridiculous.
What destroys more open space, used more energy, and pollutes more? A community where people are concentrated in homes that share common walls (townhouses) or common walls and floors (apartments), and the residents often don't drive cars at all, but can walk or ride public transit wherever they can go. Or, having that same population sprawled on individual houses on 1/2 to 5-acre lots over the countryside, interspersed with shopping malls, requiring typically 30,000 miles of car use per person per year?
I even have far easier access to locally produced food in the city (at least in Pennsylvania) than suburban or rural Americans in most areas. There are farmers markets, public markets and CSA farm deliveries. Try to find such things in rural America.
And with the more concentrated population, food distribution in general requires less transportation.
The highly local heat island effect is not a contributor to global warming.
pjd412
It might be time for you to leave the East Coast and visit some of the world. It is exactly the concentration of pollution that is so devastating on the ecology. Consider that the feces of 100 cattle on an open pasture is mere fertilizer, recycled cleanly and quickly into soil nutrients. The same 100 cattle confined into a small feed lot yields a toxic sludge that must be mechanically removed and processed to be rendered safe again. The same works in cities.
Your city scape is a bit utopian for rational consideration. Most people do not work withing walking distance of their homes. Many urbanites actually work in suburban areas, and take advantage of commuting "opposite the traffic" to save time. Many drive as much as their suburban cohorts. Where people can work close to their homes, you are quite correct.
In my area, the public transit system is so poorly designed that it does not go where most commuters need to go. It is designed to bring people to a central downtown area, while most of the commerce is clustered into 4 or 5 business centers or corridors. If the trains went where people needed to go, they couldn't build enough trains to hold all the passengers.
Also, in most rural and exurban towns, the living and business areas are located close together, traffic is dispersed, backups are unheard of, and commute times (and gas consumption) is relatively small. Average mileage on autos is just under 12k miles per year. Local food is a matter of looking. I have little trouble finding locally-grown or -produced, vegetables, fruit, meat, dairy, and grain products. In the most rural areas I have lived, local fresh items, meat and dairy were plentiful in season, though processed foods came from further away.
Lastly, the "heat island" effect has a significant effect on regional weather and climate. The growth of Atlanta, Houston, Dallas/Fort Worth, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Detroit, and other large urban centers have had a measurable effect. In fact, due to the growth of Atlanta from 1940 to 1980, the rainfall, average humidity, average temperature, and cloud cover of the entire North Georgia/South Carolina region was dramatically modified. When a large reservoir, Lake Allatoona, was constructed, the climate moderated significantly, offsetting some of the "Atlanta Effect". The changes were not "heat islands". They were significant climate modifiers.
t_g
We have a Peugeot scooter and a 3 year old Peugeot 206 GTI - as need arises we use them alternatively. We mostly use our pushbikes for getting around.
When we lived in Sydney, we had a Range Rover (!) and a VW Golf GTI. Our son used a Ducati motorbike. Now he lives in Shanghai, China and uses a small BMW.
Our house has been built from recycled timber, powder coated aluminium and we don't have air-conditioning or even fans. Our house is airy, we have lots of french windows and large windows - all with louvres.
No, we are not US americans, I am French-Hungarian, my husband is Argentinian. Work has brought us to Australia (Sydney) in 1995 and we liked it here so much, that we have stayed for good. Now we are both retirees.
We do have friends in South America and Europe, and yes, we do travel. This is part of the reason why we have opted for a simpler, more energy efficient life.